Thursday, 30 January 2014

Oh yeah, it started innocently enough… a turbo here and a ‘speed’ there. Before we knew it time banks were tiny, blinds were going up faster and antes were leaving your stack faster than you could rake in pots.

Then Full Tilt started the great speed-up-poker arms race, conveniently just before they went broke and crashed into 18 months of oblivion. Rush Poker cut out the waiting time between hands by pooling players together, though even this was not the end of the escalation.

Hyper-Turbo tournaments followed, then Rush got emulated around the world, with Zoom, Speed Holdem and, erm, well, Strobe? *ahem* Anyway, there were soon tournaments in this format, and 2x and 3x turbos where you could buy back in for 1/3rd of a small blind…

Now, in 2014, things have started to get silly.

Adrenaline Rush Poker sees Rush cut down to 10 blinds with no pesky post-flop play to slow things down.

How about we just get to the natural end of this process already and stop messing around with increments? Look Poker sites, you know that we know that you know that we know that you know that all you want is our fucking money… so come on, take it, take it fast and take it all.

Just to speed up the speeding up process I came up with 3 poker games which are so fast that if you sneeze you might miss them.

Fastest Poker Games Online #1 – Bankroll Refresh Holdem

Instead of messing around with cards, I am suggesting we just put a big red ‘Play’ button next to each player’s balance in the cashier. Whenever this is clicked, their bankroll either goes up a bit, or down a bit. We could make it more exciting with the occasional big win. To make it feel like a game of skill there should be some cards dealt (quickly, of course) and some chip noises.

To give it that real world effect how about adding a chat box where someone randomly pops up and calls the player a retard now and again?

Fastest Poker Games Online #2 – JD Speedball Poker

This one is a bit of an online / offline hybrid and would involve taking a serious amount of Crystal Meth, Opiates and washing them down with a bottle of Jack Daniels. When you wake up you’ll find that you have played a million hands of holdem, with your strategy decided by which keyboard buttons your head
falls onto when you pass out. You’ll be able to check your balance which will be displayed in extra big letters, along with the address of your nearest ER clinic.

Friday, 17 January 2014

PokerStars already own poker on the desktop
and laptop, dear Melted Felt readers, and with a new software update they are
aiming to own mobiles and tablets too.

What many players are not aware of is a
special algorithm which can detect when you are sat on the toilet. This changes
your mobile avatar to a picture of the john, so that your opponents will know
your focus might be on other things.

Insider sources are telling me that a
patent has been filed to use the subtle changes in skin conductivity combined with bet sizing dara to tell
the world whether you are sat for a number 1, 2 or have been ‘rearranging the furniture’
down there recently… though we are not too sure what the on-screen icon for the
latter will be.

Party Poker are expected to fight back by
making really sh1t strategic decisions and losing more of their market share.